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| Giovanni Battista Zelotti Trompe l'oeil Caryatids framing Muses in Pastoral Setting 1561-65 fresco Hall of the Muses, Villa Godi, Lugo di Vicenza |
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| Marco Marchetti Design for Decorative Frieze with Caryatids ca. 1570-75 drawing Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Giulio Romano Hermaphrodite as Caryatid ca. 1510-20 drawing Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Anonymous Netherlandish Artist after Cornelis Bos Double Caryatid ca. 1535-40 engraving Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Anonymous Netherlandish Artist Drapery Study of Classical Caryatid 16th century drawing Harvard Art Museum |
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| Angiolo Falconetto Caryatid before 1567 etching British Museum |
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| Marcantonio after Raphael Design for Censer supported by Caryatids ca. 1515-25 engraving Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| attributed to Pirro Ligorio Caryatid facing Left ca. 1550 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art |
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| attributed to Pirro Ligorio Caryatid facing Right ca. 1550 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art |
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| Marcantonio Design for Façade with Caryatids early 16th century engraving Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
The Revolutionary
Look at them standing there in authority
The pale-faces,
As if it could have any effect any more.
Pale-face authority,
Caryatids,
Pillars of white bronze standing rigid, lest the skies fall.
What a job they've got to keep it up.
Their poor, idealist foreheads naked capitals
To the entablature of clouded heaven.
When the skies are going to fall, fall they will
In a great chute and rush of débâcle downwards.
Oh and I wish the high and super-gothic heavens would come down now,
The heavens above, that we yearn to and aspire to.
I do not yearn, nor aspire, for I am a blind Samson.
And what is daylight to me that I should look skyward?
Only I grope among you, pale-faces, caryatids, as among a forest of pillars that hold up the dome of high ideal heaven
Which is my prison,
And all these human pillars of loftiness, going stiff, metallic-stunned with the weight of their responsibility
I stumble against them.
Stumbling-blocks, painful ones.
To keep on holding up this ideal civilisation
Must be excruciating: unless you stiffen into metal, when it is easier to stand stock rigid than to move.
This is why I tug at them, individually, with my arm round their waist
The human pillars.
They are not stronger than I am, blind Samson.
The house sways.
I shall be so glad when it comes down.
I am so tired of the limitations of their Infinite.
I am so sick of the pretensions of the Spirit.
I am so weary of pale-face importance.
Am I not blind, at the round-turning mill?
Then why should I fear their pale faces?
Or love the effulgence of their holy light,
The sun of their righteousness?
To me, all faces are dark,
All lips are dusky and valved.
Save your lips, O pale-faces,
Which are slips of metal,
Like slits in an automatic-machine, you columns of give-and-take.
To me, the earth rolls ponderously, superbly
Coming my way without forethought or afterthought.
To me, men's footfalls fall with a dull, soft rumble, ominous and lovely,
Coming my way.
But not your foot-falls, pale-faces,
They are a clicketing of bits of disjointed metal
Working in motion.
To me, men are palpable, invisible nearnesses in the dark
Sending out magnetic vibrations of warning, pitch-dark throbs of invitation.
But you, pale-faces,
You are painful, harsh-surfaced pillars that give off nothing except rigidity,
And I jut against you if I try to move, for you are everywhere, and I am blind,
Sightless among all your visuality,
You staring caryatids.
See if I don't bring you down, and all your high opinion
And all your ponderous roofed-in erection of right and wrong
Your particular heavens,
With a smash.
See if your skies aren't falling!
And my head, at least, is thick enough to stand it, the smash.
See if I don't move under a dark and nude, vast heaven
When your world is in ruins, under your fallen skies.
Caryatids, pale-faces.
See if I am not Lord of the dark and moving hosts
Before I die.
– D.H. Lawrence (1921)
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| Anonymous Italian Artist Caryatids 16th century drawing Harvard Art Museums |
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| Anonymous Italian Artist after Raphael Two Caryatids from frescoes in the Stanza di Eliodoro, Vatican ca. 1550-1600 drawing Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Cornelis Bos after Giovanni Francesco Penni Caryatid with Oar, representing Navigation from Raphael fresco in the Stanza di Eliodoro ca. 1537-55 engraving Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Anonymous Italian Artist Strap-Work Cartouche, flanked by Caryatids, surmounted by Mask 16th century drawing Museo del Prado, Madrid |